


Thump

by almina



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-18 01:37:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18976105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almina/pseuds/almina
Summary: Hobbs is gravely injured,  Jackson works a small miracle





	Thump

Homer Jackson had a twitchy premonition. It bloomed as he obsessively cleaned his surgery, its attached two bed ward, and the bathroom with its spacious shower, and finally his own bedroom. After years of field hospitals, this modest set up was heaven.. He hoped the unease would dissipate as soon as he went to sleep. He put freshly washed and boiled sheets on his bed. He smoothed the bedding, puffed the pillows, and dusted the Venetion blinds that screened his bedroom from the surgery. He opened this clinic on impulse months ago after Caitlin told him providing him room and board were a too high price to pay for a cat house doctor, and later the same day Reid made clear his disapproval of Jackson's dissolute habits. Jackson had to be his own man, do what he could do even better than forensics, healing.

He changed the sheets on the narrow bed beside his . Sometimes he put very sick patients to sleep in that bed while he slept in his own. Even in deep sleep he was aware of the patient, his breathing, shifts of position, tiny unconscious groans that signalled pain. Twice since he opened his surgery, he dreamed that a patient was dying. He got up and was horrified to see a dressing ripped away, sutures pulled open. Damn, some people were as bad as dogs for tearing open surgical incisions. But on both occasions he caught the hemorrhage before it killed his patient. As he thought of those incidents, and the dreams that woke him to save a life, he knew abruptly and specifically that he had to go to the Leman Street station. Someone there desperately required his attention.

But it was four am. He was tired. Today he'd seen a steady parade of patients, among them a grandfather with a cinder in his eye which concerned him more than the cancer in his throat, and a little girl who sprained her wrist when she fell out of a tree as she climbed after her brother.. Jackson took his time with these people. In Whitechapel there was nothing but poor man's medicine, no summons to great houses to tend a single patient. Yet it was satisfying, this repairing fractures, easing pain, quelling infection. It had been a good day. That pleased him as did the now spotless surgery that smelled clean after his scrubbing, the tidiness satisfied him in a fundamental way. It gave him pleasure to look over the binocular microscope beside the orderly line of bottled stains for slides, shining clean round bottom flasks beside the bunsen burner. He kept the sterilizing pressure cooker autoclave in the kitchen. on the cast iron stove. He could hear the faint hiss as steam reached pressure and escaped. For all Jackson's dissipation, he liked things clean, including his patients. The Leman Street dead room, Lord the sepsis in that place. Occasionally a cop would ask him to check an injury or abrasion. He obliged, but the dead room was a hive of pathogens. He would be afraid to do surgery there, except on those people for whom infection was no longer a concern.

Jackson yawned and stretched. He shuffled to the kitchen and downed some black coffee so strong it wrung his mouth. That helped a little. He killed the flame under the sterilizer At the kitchen sink, he splashed warm then cold water on his face. Ahhh. He pat-slapped his face with both hands. He was awake now. He would go to the Leman St. station and see what was making him feel so nerved up. He slung his medical kit onto his shoulder

The station house lobby felt just as a house did when someone in a family had died. Tonight the tsunami of grief felt as it did when a child had passed; people here wanted to tear their hair and shriek to high heaven. Artherton spotted Jackson and spared him his usual disdain He pointed to the dead room. Jackson strode to the door and slammed it open. Drake and Reid glanced at him. Between them, Hobbs lay on the table, stripped, head, raised on the block, ready for brain dissection, hair wet, his face pinched and shadowed. Dead. Jackson watched as a welt of gooseflesh formed on Hobb's thin chest. That often happened as rigor progressed, but then the notch between the collarbones sank as if Hobbs were trying to draw breath. Jackson stepped forward, shouldering Drake aside. He stood at Hobb's side, and in that second saw the boy try again to breathe.

"God damn it." He slammed the side of his fist onto Hobbs' sternum. Hobbs bounced and a gout of Thames water spurted from his mouth. Jackson turned him so he hung head down over the side of the autopsy table. Hobbs vomited and poured more water from his lungs and stomach..

"I'm going to squeeze it all out of you," Jackson said to Hobbs as if he threaten the boy back to good health. "Every drop, both ends" Hobbs coughed and flailed. Vomitus splattered on the floor and Reid stepped away from it looking not at all disgusted, but absurdly happy, though his eyes were red. 

"He's as cold as a fish on ice. Get a blanket." Jackson said. Drake hurried out the deadroom door, for once happy to oblige Reid's irritating American. Jackson looked at Hobb's back as the kid shuddered and coughed and twitched his legs. Jackson touched the skin by the spine. 

"What's this? We've seen this before. Someone meant to paralyze Hobbs before he put him into the river." 

Reid nodded. 

"Let me see his jacket," Jackson said. Reid handed him Hobbs' civvie jacket, sodden and rank, then put his hand on Hobbs' back to keep him from sliding headfirst off the table 

"Got him?" 

Reid nodded and squeezed the kid's shoulder. Jackson ran his forefinger along the cloth and found the hole the blade had opened, exactly on the center seam. He thrust his index finger into the hole and wiggled it. Jackson visualized what had happened.

"Yeah, he was going to pith you like a frog but you fought and moved the blade off target," he said.

Hobbs was now conscious enough that he understood and nodded, though he still hung over the side of the table.

"I'm going to have to clean and dress that wound or infection will reach the spinal cord and you may not breathe again, let alone walk"

Hobbs understood and turned his face to look at Jackson with complete trust. "But no way in hell am I doing it here," Jackson said. This place is filthy with germs I can't even name. We're going to my surgery." Jackson pulled Hobbs up so he lay supine on the table. The kid pushed the block from under his head. Good sign that he was trying to make himself comfortable. Or maybe he remembered post mortem procedures done on heads positioned on blocks.

'"Your surgery?" Hobbs raspy voice was little more than a whisper, but he looked as happy as a child whose father had just told him they would spend all day at the fair.  
He'd visited Jackson's clinic once before right after Jackson set it up.

Reid looked the question.

"We're going to wrap him up, put him and his clothes in a closed carriage, gotta be closed, he's already hypothermic," Jackson said.

Drake returned as Jackson helped Hobbs to a sitting position. They wrapped him in two blankets. His head hung as if he was memorizing the tesselated tile floor. His bare feet sometimes dragged as Jackson and Drake helped him to the front door of the station. He and Drake had tight hold of the kid. Hobbs couldn't have fallen if he wanted to. All eyes in the lobby, police and prisoners' alike followed them. Reid would have the police carriage waiting. Hobbs could not make his legs work Jackson had to assume he suffered spinal damage. 

As soon as Hobbs was seated in the coach, violent shivering began. Jackson reached into his kit and plucked out a bottle of caffeine tablets. "Sometimes these help. He shook two into his palm and handed them to Hobbs who shivered so violently the tablets would have flown from his hand, if Reid had not reached across the carriage and steadied his wrist. Jackson leaned down and touched the Hobbs' right foot. "Can you feel that?" 

Hobbs nodded, his lips dark blue even in the dim light. Jackson touched the other foot and raised his eyebrows. Hobbs nodded again. "Can you move that foot?"

Hobbs left foot twitched, the best he could do.. "Can you wiggle your toes?" Hobbs could do that but just barely. 

Jcakson put his hand flat on the sole of Hobbs' right foot.. "Push as hard as you can."

Hobbs did. 

"Better than I expected.," Jackson said. Reid as usual, looked interested in Jackson's clinical doings.

The carriage stopped at Jackson's surgery. Jackson and Drake drew Hobbs out of the carriage. Hobbs could not move his legs at all for the step down. He held the blankets close around him, for warmth as much as modesty. He tried to walk across the curb and up the steps but Jackson and Drake had to bear all his weight. Jackson tossed his keys to Reid who opened the door. 

Together Jackson and Drake dragged Hobbs into the surgery. Jackson saw that Drake was prepared to lift the kid onto the operating table straightaway. 

"Not quite yet," Jackson said. "We've got to get him clean and warm first. He nodded toward the bathroom. The door was ajar. Drake pushed it all the way open and saw the largest clawfoot tub he had ever seen in his life. He set the plug and turned on the taps. Steam rose in the chilly room. "Hot, but perfect for my purposes," Jackson said. "Hold him up," he said to Drake, as he leaned down and put his hand into the water. 

"This is going to feel a lot hotter than it actually is," Jackson said. They let the blankets fall away from Hobbs, who stood naked and unsteady before the three men who had thought him dead less than an hour earlier. 

"In you go," Jackson said. He and Drake lifted the kid and set him in the tub. Hobbs gasped. "Too hot," he said. and reached his hand for the cold water tap.

Reid moved to help him. Jackson shook his head. 'It's not going to do damage. It feels scalding to him because he is so cold" He took the new four ounce bar of soap, store bought soap, with its herbal/floral scent so different to the fierce lye soap on the American frontier. Jackson had not put it to a test. Did it remove the germs and filth he could see under the microscope? He had to get that wound and all of Hobbs' body clean after immersion in the sewage contaminated Thames. He was about to scrub Hobbs' back when he thought of Cecily. He was on his knees by the tub and turned to Reid who was amused to watch Jackson in this servant's role. 

"Could you get a message to Hobb's wife?"

Reid's mouth opened in surprise. "A word," and jerked his head toward the surgery. Jackson braced himself on the edge of the tub to stand up. "See he doesn't drown," he said to Drake. Jackson followed Reid out of the bathroom.

"He's married? I had no idea. I should have contacted his wife as soon as he was brought in."

"Would you bring her here?"

Reid felt he had been remiss in not knowing Hobbs was married. Hobbs, so young, so unformed. Reid had thought marriage was years out for him. Everyone wanted to take Hobbs under his wing.

When Jackson returned to the tub, Hobbs was trying to wash his own back but it hurt. 

"You'll have to let Cecily do that for you for a while. The spinalis muscle is damaged. By the by, Reid is going to drop by your place to tell her what happened and bring her here. 

Hobbs snapped his face toward Jackson.

"I want to write her a note. She'll be frightened when Inspector Reid tells her I am in your surgery."

Hobbs was thinking, being considerate as usual. Jackson had treated near drownings, people buried in avalanches, or pulled from quicksand. These people continued to breathe but their brains no longer worked,. They usually succumbed to pneumonia within days Hobbs was not damaged that way. He could still use his mind.

"Reid don't leave just yet," Jackson called out. "Hobbs is going to write a note for delivery to Cecily. She will be much relieved to see his handwriting."

Jackson laid notepaper across a book and held it steady while Hobbs leaned on the side of the tub to scribble a note to his Cecily. Reid stood in the bathroom door as if it were perfectly ordinary that an inspector watch a constable quiver in a bathtub all the while trying to keep from splashing the note paper and smeariing the ink. Jackson held the finished note, let it dry a few seconds before he handed it to Reid who quarter folded it and put it into his coat pocket.

Reid took off on a constable's errand, glad to redeem himself in a small way for assuming that Hobbs had died. Christ, if anyone but Jackson had shown up, Hobbs would have been opened for post mortem while he still lived. An occurrence which that deranged American writer, Poe, would have made a story. And he Edmund Reid, would be responsible that horror. Never mind that everyone who looked on Hobbs had thought him dead. The responsibilty and blame for allowing mutilation would fall on Reid.

He swayed as the carriage rattled over the cobblestones. The coachman knew all the coppers' addresses; he had encyclopedic knowledge of London streets in his grizzled head. His horses all but read his mind When he was in his cups he swore he could lay down the reins and the beasts would draw the carriage where he meant it to go. He took Reid straight to Hobbs' door Cecily Hobbs answered at Reid's first knock. Hobbs' wife was plain but radiated kindness. She was aware of her station in life, but unabashed, perhaps unimpressed on meeting a police inspector. She drew a sharp breath as she read the note.She asked Reid to come in while she gathered clean clothes for her husband. They were on their way to Jackson's clinic within ten minutes. In the carriage, she talked, Reid thought ,only to avoid stony silence. 

"Dick visited the surgery soon after Capt. Jackson opened it. He told me he'd love to show it to me, the microscope, the slides of germs and human cells, the surgical instruments, the chemicals, the sterilizer He said Homer would let us watch a surgery, if the patient had no objection."

Homer said? So Jackson and Hobbs were friends? 

His American was full of surprises. The coach stopped. Cecily ran to Jackson's door. Drake opened it. 

She said ,"Where?"

Drake pointed to the bathroom. Reid followed her inside and saw her fling open the bathroom door. Her husband would have no privacy when she feared for him. He heard Jackson talking to her..

"..much improved since I first saw him, but still in danger. Reid held back, reluctant to intrude. However he saw Cecily fall to her knees beside the tub and kiss her husband's shoulder, kiss down his arm then hold his wet hand to her face.

Drake said it was time to take his leave, carry the good news back to Leman street, and best he get there before someone took revenge for Hobbs' death. Reid nodded, glad that Drake saw what should be done. 

He and Jackson watched Drake step out into the night. The carriage door closed with a muffled clump sound..

"Not going home?" Jackson said. 

"No point at this hour." 

Reid looked tired to the point of sickness. Jackson felt for him. He had done a lot of that in his life, working to quivery exhaustion. He pointed to his bedroom adjoining the surgery. "You can sleep in there . Walk to the station in the morning. It's just a hop, skip and a jump from here. The temptation was too much for Reid to resist. Hours ago, Drake had pounded his door, wakening him from deep and much needed sleep to hear the terrible news of Hobbs.

In Jackson's bedroom Reid closed the curtains so he would not have to see what happened in the surgery. He stripped to his underwear, lay down and drew the sheets and blankets over himself. As if in a dream, he heard voices from the other room, Jackson, Cecily and occasionally Hobbs. No excitement, no upset. Then he heard Jackson closeby, telling him to move over, he was coming to bed and "Don't worry, your virtue is in no danger." The bed sagged as Jackson got under the covers. 

After a while Jackson propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Reid who stared at the moonlit ceiling. Tired as Reid looked, he should have been comatose but he stared at the ceiling and barely breathed.

"You didn't fail him, Reid."

"Came close to it. I would have let someone slice him open for autopsy."

"It would have been obvious he lived as soon as a few blood vessels were cut and pouring blood"

"Not obvious to some of the drunks who do forensics at Leman Street. "What you did tonight was remarkable," Reid added. "I'm sure everyone at the station has heard of by now of the American laying on his hands, recalling young Hobbs to life." 

"Laying on fists," Jackson said, raising his fist as if he would thump Reid's chest. 

Reid caught Jackson's fist and instead of pushing it away as Jackson expected, held it to his heart. "Miraculous, even. We were mourning as if he were dead.."

"You give me too much credit, I ain't the first doc to thump a patient out of frustration. You catch 'em just as the heart is about to stop, when you feel the pulse giving out. Besides Hobbs may yet turn deathly ill for absorbing that river filth in all its infinite variety. He is not out of danger."

"You'll be staying here to take care of him then. Come in when it's convenient."

"Actually Cecily will be taking care of him. I can't afford a staff of nurses, so I teach families how to take care of patients. Cecily's a quick study. She had his hair lathered up and was rinsing him when I went to fetch him for surgery. She knew he had to be cleaned up. She watches. Very calm She held his hand all he way through re-opening the wound and irrigating it. She asked to dress it. I let her."

Reid finally shifted his attention from the ceiling and looked at Jackson

"If my not so busy practice permits," Jackson continued. I'll take her shopping tomorrow, l to find some oranges that have a dusty mold on the rind. That mold is magic for clearing infections, using it topically or ingesting it. An old wives' tale that works. I'm going to be showing her what to get and how to use it." 

Jackson's calm and clear plan to care for Hobbs eased Reid's worry. He closed his eyes, still awake but happy in this wandering conversation. It felt so good to have Jackson to depend upon. Jackson insisted he was not to blame. Blame. He shuddered at the memory of Mathilda sliding off the broken ship. Blame and more blame. His fault. But was it? 

For his part,Jackson liked having Reid in his bed, talking in the dark and, the long comfortable silences while each man followed his own thoughts. Caitlin was prickly, dissatisfaction a chronic state with her. He was used to that but how fine it was to bask in this calm, the sense that his contribution was welcome. Jackson woke as soon as the morning sunlight touched his face. He pulled on trousers, pulled the braces onto his shoulders and let Reid sleep. Shirtless and barefoot, he went to the ward to check on Hobbs. Cecily had climbed out of the armchair beside the bed. She had put her shoes neatly under it. She lay curled around her husband. her arm around his waist. Hobbs held her hand. It was sweet to see them. Hobbs' color was much better this morning, no cyanosis in his lips nor in the raccoon shadows around his eyes. Jackson put the backs of his fingers to Hobbs' forehead. No fever. No more chill. Thank God for small favors.

He could not wait to tell Reid.

Jackson set coffee to perking, then remembered that others might not share his American tastes. He steeped tea as Cecily appeared in the doorway. "I'll take it to him and do chores while he sleeps. Just tell me what you want done. "

"Aren't you sweet. How's his wound looking? Any seepage on the dressing? Any foul smell?"

"Some stain on the dressing. He should have another bath today, yes? I've already drawn the water, about as hot as it was last night .."

Good, I don't even want to think about all that river sewage that seeped into his pores."

"What are those wooden rails on the walls? " 

"Something your husband may be using soon. A lot of people have to learn to walk all over again. War wounds, amputees, strokes. They grasp the rail with one hand, and my shoulders with the other arm, and they can support themselves, get their legs working again. 

" I can do that. Shall we start today?"

"Let him rest. He has to recover from attempted murder, near drowning. More stress will only set him up for illness."

Jackson looked at Cecily who eyed the polished gleaming wood of the rail he'd installed, even here in the kitchen, copying the set up for restorative therapy in US civil war veterans' hospitals, north and south. "

"Tell you what, as soon as he is dried off, we will take him for a short walk along the ward rail. I want to show you both how it's done. Don't let him push himself." 

He followed Cecily into the bathroom. She had already helped her husband to the tub Doubtless she could not lift him, except one leg at a time. Such initiative and good sense. She carried a cup of tea to him. This was a woman happy to spoil her man. Just what he needed. Hobbs luxuriated in the water, resting his head on the back of the tub. Warm, finally warm. Cecily lowered the teacup to where he could grasp it. He took a long swallow of tea. Cecily set the cup and saucer on the floor then reached out her hands to her husband and pulled him upright. He grasped the wall handles Jackson installed. He stepped out of the tub without help, except leaning on his wife's shoulders.. Jackson considered that daring, even foolhardy considering how badly Hobbs' legs worked yesterday

"C'mon, a taste of restorative therapy- just a little today- to get you walking right," Cecily said.

She took a towel from the shelf and dried her husband's body. She had no shyness about drying his genitalia in Jackson's presence. Nor was she shy about asking Jackson for a bathrobe long enough to fit her husband. Homer helped Hobbs into it then grasped his arm to take him to the rail. Cecily took his other arm as soon as she saw Homer's effort was less helping her husband to walk than dragging him. Hobbs had suffered a lifechanging injury. Jackson was glad that Cecily now had a good idea what she was dealing with. Hobbs grasped the rail with his right hand. Jackson pulled his left arm across his shoulders. Damn, he should have put a belt around Hobbs' waist to guide him. Cecily saw what was needed, knelt behind her husband, grasped his right ankle and put that foot forward, Hobbs' weight shifted onto his right leg. She moved the other foot. Again a shift of weight. Cecily moved forward on her knees. Moved the right foot Then his left.They were walking, after a fashion,she and her husband, clumsy and shakey yes, but walking.Two steps, then six along the ward wall. 

"About face," Jackson said. Cecily stood up, took her husband's right arm across her shoulders and the three of them pivoted in a line to face the opposite direction. 

And there was Reid, awake and fully dressed. He'd been watching. 

"Morning Reid, you look better, but any change would be an improvement," Jackson said.

Cecily giggled, stopped herself and looked at the floor. 

Jackson released Hobbs into Cecily's hold.

"I can get him back to bed now."she said

Hobbs leaned more heavily on her and let her walk him back to his bed. He moved his legs and looked proud of that small accomplishment and mightily pleased with his sturdy little wife. She pushed him back on the bed and scooped up his legs up to get the rest on him onto the mattress. She rolled him on his side to peel off the hospital robe.She drew the blankets over him and puffed the pillow. Jackson returned to the kitchen Reid trailing him. 

Jackson sat and gestured for Reid to do the same.

"You know how this is going to go? " Jackson said. "He'll get better, walk again and on good days, no one will see anything wrong. He'll be passed fit for service. But when he gets tired, he'll go lame or worse. He'll be no good in a fight."

Reid looked bleak. He was going to have to fire one of his favorites, everyone's favorite. It would work a hardship on Hobbs' family. Hobbs wanted to be a good copper. You could see that in all he did.

Reid looked out the kitchen window. "I would rather have Hobbs reach the conclusion himself, that he is unfit for service. Let him see leaving as the right thing to do. He could maintain his pride."

"You have a kinder heart than I thought," Jackson said.

"As have you."

Jackson slightly bowed his head a gesture of thanks. "You know Reid, if you are exhausted at work, if you feel as you did last night you would be welcome to come here to sleep. You may hear children crying, sometimes their parents crying, but you can sleep if you need it."

Cecily appeared then, teacup in hand, excused herself for disturbing them. Utterly without proof Jackson felt certain she had heard every word they said. She poured more tea into her husband's cup. "I'll be shopping today, anything you want me to pick up for your larder?"

"You don't have to shop for the clinic, thank you Cecily, buy what Dick likes. This is not the time for him to have a picky appetite."

"You've said nothing about what this will cost us." 

That was true. Jackson did a lot of care gratis, but he was happy to get enough to keep the clinic running. "We'll work something out."

"While you cleaned out the wound, you showed me the oranges with the mold you value so much. I went to the market yesterday to get Dick some sweetmeats before uh, all this happened, one shop was selling oranges from out of South Carolina, goods right off the ship. They had that blue mold on them. I think the proprietor is on the verge of throwing them away."

Jackson took coins from his pocket and handed them to Cecily "Clean him out,.get every moldy orange or lemon and get what you want since you're going to be here for a while looking after Dick." 

She put on her cloak and took her shopping sack over her arm. Reid looked in on Hobbs before he returned to the Leman St. station. Jackson watched. Hobbs did not smile, his animation and the spark in his eyes gone. Jackson had seen people manic after a close call, but Hobbs was withdrawn. Had Cecily repeated to him what she almost certainly heard Jackson say to Reid in the kitchen? In that moment he wished Cecily had it in her to tell a diplomatic lie. But no, practical working class creature that she was, she would be thinking ahead, facing facts. How would they cope if her husband could not earn a living. Jackson saw such capability in her. They would no doubt find a way. On the other hand he felt for the young man who was suddenly dependent on a woman. No wonder he looked away as if in shame..

Cecily returned to the clinic just after the iceman put a chunk of ice in the icebox. She handed Jackson a bag of oranges, all of them dusty with that marvelous bacteria killing mold.. Tucked under her arm, she carried a huge tablet of newsprint and a packet of charcoal drawing sticks, graphite pencils of various thickness and a gum eraser, never used. She took that straight to her husband who sat propped up in bed, staring at the wall, a bowl of untouched soup on the overbed table. Jackson followed several steps behind and peeped into the ward.,Cecily stepped closer to her husband and stood on tippy toe. She kissed him. 

"Don't gloom. I forbid it," Cecily said. Jackson heard Hobbs sigh. 

"I brought you something from home." She laid that tablet on the bed. "

"I was jealous when you got lost in drawing but now I want you to give yourself over to it. You may or may not get completely well, but you can be happy and amused. Starting now m'love." 

Two more patients arrived at the clinic - Tommy, a little boy with a dislocated finger - a fight Jackson reckoned by his silence on how it happened. His sister, Maggie, the little girl who sprained her wrist showed up again. She clutched a cloud gray kitten to her chest. He has a lump she announced. I think he has cancer like Grandpapa"

She held the kitten up. It pawed he air with its tiny feet. "Take care of him first," the little boy said. Already a man. Jackson did not think himself above veterinary work. Medicine's medicine. People will pay as much to restore an animal's health as their own. More. The child's mother lay a shillling on the table. The little girl's eyes leaked tears. 

"Don't drown him." 

Jackson moved his thumb over the kitten's neck "No, darling, I'm not going to drown this kitten and no this isn't cancer." "Where did you get him?" 

"By the dockyard."

"I see it.now. This kitty lived on a ship and probably comes from America where he was infected with a wolfworm I am going to take it out. Pretty disgusting. You may want to avert your eyes. "

That made the her brother prick up his ears. He came close to look at the kitten who was trying to claw its way up Jackson's sleeve. Jackson asked Cecily for the hydrogen peroxide on the counter. She found it and handed it to him. "And some blunt tweezers." Jajckson realized she was encouraging him to treat her as an employee, a way of paying for her husband's care.

She set the tweezers beside the squirming kitten and stepped aside so the little boy could see the disgusting sight Jackson promised.. Tommy's mouth opened as he saw the tweezers close on the parasite's head and Jackson, with a side to side motion easing it out. It wiggled when Jackson laid it on the table, delivering what he promised. something nauseating.

The little girl's mother laid down another shilling.

Cecily looked on with almost as much interest as the little boy. " I'd like to bring Dick to see this." 

She had already grasped the ancient wheel chair from its niche by the door.and was heading back to the ward. Jackson drenched the hole in the kitten's neck with hydrogen peroxide. Maggie and Tommy stood rapt. 

"He'll live," Maggie pronounced with certainty.

"While we are here," the child's mother rolled up her sleeve to reveal a splotchy burn covered with powder that jackson took to be baking soda, a common home treatment for burns and scalds. Too little, too late, the skin had sloughed off leaving bare reddened flesh susceptible to infection. 

"Ooouch," Jackson said when he saw it. The woman's face relaxed; someone acknowledged the pain of the scald. "May I wash and dress that?" 

Maggie's mother nodded 

"Roll up your sleeve." The woman did so and Jackson led her to the sink in the surgery, opened the tap for the jug of boiled and filtered water, his improvisation inspired by what he smelled in water from the Thames and saw under the microscope. It was room termperature. "Okay, I am not going to rub it, we'll just run very clean water over the injury. The lady bit her lips as water sluiced over the burn. 

"Let it drip for a moment." He pulled out a chair for her to sit down. "Would you care for some whiskey to dull the pain?" 

Proper woman that she was, she would not accept a drink from a man who was not her husband.

"I'll use cocaine on it then. It will dull the pain in this one spot.. And don't worry It won't become a habit if you are not injecting it. or breathing it

Jackson irrigated the wound with a dilute cocaine solution. The woman relaxed. Jackson grinned at her. Quelling a patient's pain and fear was one of the delights of medicine. 

"Sit still. I want to get something to treat the injury before I bandage it." Jackson strolled out of the room as Hobbs came rolling into the surgery just then, Cecily pushing the wheelchair. 

"You haven't discarded it yet?" she said. Tommy knew just what she meant and picked up the wolfworm in his palm and held it up to her face. 

"Show it to my husband."He wants to see it. I promised him something loathsome." 

Tommy held the larva up to Hobbs' face as if offering a piece of candy. Hobbs' brows knit as he looked at the larva. 

"No thank you." Hobbs thought it was funny and since he still had strength in his arms, he picked up Tommy and sat the kid on his lap. Cecily pushed the wheelchair around the surgery . Tommy laughed and said, "Faster,faster."

From the ward, Jackson heard the chatter and laughter. 'You want a good time come to my surgery' he thought. He stood by the window that caught southern light. He had potted geraniums and violets on the wide sill, and also an aloe vera that had just begun to thrive. He noticed the pad of news print on the bed. He glanced toward the surgery and opened it. Hmm, Hobbs had drawn his feet poking out from under the sheets. Pretty good, 

Then a few pages in,a drawing of Cecily, nude, lying face down, that wrist thick braid loosed in waves down her back, to that perfect sweetheart of an ass.

"Hobbs, you devil." 

He flipped the page. Jackson came from a time when the Hippocratic oath included a promise to refrain from seducing patients, to keep your hands off men and women of a patient's household, be they slave or freeborn Admiring the that very good drawing of Cecily was taking him too close to the line. He riffled a few pages from it and there was a drawing of Reid, of nearly photographic accuracy. Jackson was impressed. Hobbs had to have done that from memory. Jackson could not see Reid sitting for a portrait by a very junior member of the police force. There was something else in the drawing Hobbs obviously thought Reid attractive; he had enjoyed visualizing that face. Jackson reflected that looking at Reid put thoughts into your head , thoughts you usually did not divulge. So the angelic Hobbs felt it too. Jackson had to find or manufacture a legitimate reason for Hobbs to show him these drawings. 

 

But first... He carried that plant to the surgery where Tommy was urging Cecily to push the chair faster. Cecily was glad to oblige. Her husband looked happy for the first time that day. Tommy was laughing oblivious to his dislocated index finger, which Jackson was going to reduce in the next few minutes. That would hurt. No way around it. Maybe sitting on Hobbs' lap would make it easier to bear.

That plant," Cecily said , "the odd looking one by the flowers."

"Yeah," Jackson said. "it's an ugly duckling but its sap is great for healing."

He gently took Mrs, Harrison's wrist and turned it over to expose the burn. he snapped a fat leaf off the plant and squeezed until the honey thick clear sap dripped out onto the skinless injury He bandaged it. 

Hobbs watched , distracted from his own problems

"Keep the air off it." If it gets very warm or painful come back here, and I'll clean out the infection. He put adhesive tape on the edges the of the sterilized dressing.

"Too tight?" he said. 

"Feels much better already." 

Jackson gently rolled her sleeve down and fastened the pearl button. 

"Now Tommy, it's your turn," Jackson said. "Maybe Constable Hobbs will let you sit on his lap while I reduce that dislocation." 

That was just fine with Tom who relaxed against Hobbs and let his head rest on Hobbs' chest. Cecily took his hand. "So you aren't going to tell me how this happened," Jackson said taking the child's other hand as if he had to consider the course of action. He grasped the dislocated finger and with a sudden but gentle tug, realigned the proximal interphalangeal joint. "That didn't hurt," Tommy said as if he had won a contest Tough guy. 

Mrs. Harrison peered at the finger. "Much better and it isn't swollen. "

"Tis a little bit." Jackson touched the puffy bruise on the side of the finger. Tommy flinched. "Tell you what Tom, I am going to leave that finger sore because I want you to be careful of it." 

Mrs. Harrison nodded approval of that strategy and Jackson saw that she was used to dealing with this headstrong little boy who would not obey her but he would pay attention to discomfort. Jackson had met up with his young self. Mrs. Harrison pulled more coins from her purse, more than Jackson would have charged.

"Thank you for everything."

Then she turned to Hobbs and Cecily. "Thank you too, you made this process much easier than I expected."

Hobbs nodded, glad to be of use again. 

Cecily and Hobbs returned to the ward.Jackson cleaned up the table, and threw rags into the hamper for cleaning and sterilization by a patient who did laundry as payment for medical care. The surgery was soon clean to his exacting standards. He saw an opportunity. He returned to the ward to find Hobbs still in the wheel chair. He or Cecily had braced the newsprint pad up against the foot of the bed, like an easel. Cecily was reading. Dick was absorbed in his drawing. Jackson eased up behind him. 

"That's very good," he said of the sketch of Tommy. "Could you do a drawing of similar quality of the person who attacked you?" A likeness the police could use in finding him. Reid wants him brought to justice. Wants it in the worst way." 

Maybe that would make Hobbs feel better, that a man for whom he had such stong feelings wanted justice for him. 

Cecily moved the aloe plant out of the shade of flowering plants, closer to the glass. "it deserves a lot of sunlight." 

She broke off a violet and put it in her husband's hair and kissed his scalp. "Who is that?" 

She was looking at the drawing Hobbs was making for Reid.

"The man who tried to kill me, nearly succeeded."

As soon as Hobbs finished the drawing, Cecily pulled the sheet off the tablet and showed it to Jackson. "So now you will know him if you see him on the street. If you don't want to kill him, tell me. I do"

Jackson recognized the man.in the drawing, those hooded eyes, that handsome immobile face. Frank Goodnight. Better, he knew where to find him.

"Aren't you warlike, Mrs. Hobbs. Rather then sending you out to do murder, let's have Reid visit us, and Hobbs can fill in details the drawing can't convey, smell, manner.What was said, what he did."

Then Jackson turned to Hobbs.

"This is very good and very fast, Could you do another? Full body and the way he dressed?" 

"If any patients show up tell them not to bleed on the floor and that I will be right back." He rolled up Hobbs' drawing of Frank Goodnight and was off to Leman Street. 

Reid stood at the desk talking with Artherton. Jackson unrolled the drawiing on the desktop. "Hobbs just did this. This is the guy who tried to kill him. And as it happens, his name is Frank Goodnight. I can see you recognize him too Reid. Drop by the surgery to talk with Hobbs before you put this man in irons?" 

Both Artherton and Reid took on identical predatory expressions. Jackson left the drawing to whet their appetites..

Good day, gentlemen," he touched his hat aware that this piece of evidence delighted them.then hurried back to the surgery.

 

Reid knocked on the door before Jackson had hung up his coat. He had the drawing in hand. Hobbs grasped the hand rims of the wheelchair and brought himself in to the surgery to greet Reid. Jackson understood perfectly. Hobbs did not want to look dependent on his wife. 

"I want to hear more about this very good drawing. As it happens I recognize the subject. I want to hear what happened." 

Cecily made tea and brought two cups for her husband and Inspector Reid. Jackson appreciated how neatly she slipped into the role of little wife, utterly deferential to her husband quiet in his presence. And to think this woman had spoken of her willingness to kill Frank Goodnight.

Reid looked manic as he asked if Hobbs could draw someone on the mere description, nudge a drawing along until the witness thought it was a good likeness? 

"I've never tried that."

"But would you? The Americans have some such sketch artists in big city policedepartments. The witness describes a person and the artist draws to fit that description, then the witness tells him where he has it wrong. The artist listens and changes it until he's got a drawing from which an identification can be made, like this one you have done of Frank Goodnight."

Hobbs looked interested, Reid as usual wanted to keep up with all new methods of criminal investigation and he thought he might have the means in Hobbs Cecily grasped the drift of the talk and beamed at the thought that her husband, even if he remained crippled, might yet be a valued copper.

"I have a person in mind," Reid said, "someone you have never met." 

"Male or female?" Hobbs said, getting right into the procedure. 

"Male, forty but looks older." 

Round, squarish, oval face?"

"Heavy jaw," Reid said

High forehead, balding?"

"No."

"Widow's peak?"

Reid nodded.

Jackson would have bet the fees from his next ten patients that Reid had a member of his family in mind. 

Hobbs became more confident as Reid answered questions. Jackson watched as a face took form on the paper. It felt as if Hobbs were joining his mind to Reid's, a communication fuller than words. Hobbs stopped asking questions as his hand slowed. The drawing had personality, wolfish light eyes that did not forgive, brawny shoulders, though Reid had said nothing about the build. He looked at it a long moment when Hobbs handed him the tablet. 

"Yes, you've caught more than a likeness. The only inaccuracy is mine in that I failed to tell you he's more worn, with years of drink."

'Years of drink eh, jackson thought. Is that why you hate it when I am drunk?

"I must show this to Fred Abberline." 

Reid did just that, showing Abberline the drawing his returned from the dead constable did and comparing it with a photograph of the uncle who had been the blight of his young life.. The accuracy impressed Abbeline who wanted to Hobbs to repeat the performance with an emotional witness who had only a glimpse of the subject. The opportunity for that came next evening with an elderly man who had been beaten and robbed by wharf thugs who hated all English, even the frail and old. Two constables brought this bruised trembling man to Jackson's clinic. Jackson sutured a cut by the old man's eyebrow. 

Hobbs gentleness and kindness served him well. The old man remembered more and more until he jabbed a finger at Hobbs' drawings of the three thugs. "Those, yes, it's them." 

He thanked Hobbs, the process had been so cathartic, the first easing of the fear and humiliation the old man had felt. "You are exactly what a constable should be," he said to Hobbs who despite the wheelchair and hospital robe, felt he was back in uniform after all.


End file.
